


1,001 Nights (The Girl Come Undone Remix)

by voodoochild



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Genie/Djinn, F/M, Islam, Magic Realism, Mythical Beings & Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 16:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emily Prentiss's life changed when she moved to Riyadh, and again when she moved to Rome. David Rossi and his love of storytelling changes it a third time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1,001 Nights (The Girl Come Undone Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flyakate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyakate/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Turn the Radio Up](https://archiveofourown.org/works/119050) by [flyakate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyakate/pseuds/flyakate). 



> A remix of the "A Sorta Fairytale" drabble in "Turn the Radio Up", done in a magical realism style. 
> 
> Any and all tweaks to Arabic/Islamic mythology are entirely my own, and no offense is intended. All references, quotes, and in-jokes are explained in the end-notes.
> 
> Major spoilers for "Demonology", including Emily Prentiss's backstory, as well as "Lauren" and the conclusion of the Doyle arc in "It Takes a Village" in S7.

Emily Prentiss would say her life changed when she and her mother moved to Riyadh.

(Sometimes it is hard to think of herself as Emily, and not Aamilah. Sometimes, she cannot remember to answer to it, for it has not belonged to her for very long, and she has been Aamilah for centuries.)

Riyadh was fire and flight, kind-eyed Muslim men and women who must have seen what she would become and slipped coins and treats into her pockets. The Diplomatic Quarter was lush and green, and Emily played with the other children every day. She could stay for hours out under the hot sun, so long that the local women called her _jiniri_ , affectionately. A foreigner girl who withstood the fire of the sun, who seemed to be made of fire herself.

Elizabeth Prentiss did not like that nickname, cursed under her breath whenever it was used in her hearing. Emily understands, now; it is a hard thing to be reminded of what you once had. Whom you once loved. But Elizabeth starts working longer hours, leaving Emily in the care of babysitters or nannies or otherwise overpaid government caretakers, and her daughter grows up to resent Elizabeth for it.

Emily goes days without seeing her father, days that turn into weeks, months, years. Adult-Emily barely remembers him - smiling, dark-haired, dark bearded, spinning her so high in the air that it seemed like flying. 

Mother said he was a pilot, but when Emily remembers flying with him, there is never a memory of a plane.

***

All she remembers of Rome is cold. 

Chill seeping into her bones instead of the warmth of the sun. Mother working even longer hours, telling her to wear a coat and stop running around with John and Matthew. Daddy just gone, no word from anyone where he might be. Disapproving stares at the sullen diplomat's child who stays out at all hours and wears nothing but black.

There are no stories that ring in her heart, in Rome. It is Catholicism, prayer and repentance in words and not deeds. It is women who lie and men who lust and who pretend their sins can go away. It pricks at her, the hypocrisy, and there is a silence in Emily which Aamilah has not yet filled. Being a teenager is agony, but this horrifying absence of something is even worse. Pot and speed and meth help, but every time she wakes up in a stranger's bed, she just feels hollow. 

(She won't learn until three months later and a manual vacuum aspiration at Policinico Umberto, the true meaning of hollow.)

The only warmth is Matthew. 

Through him, she learns (she remembers) how it feels to burn. How to chase heat and desire through another person's veins, how to shake and fall apart together and build each other back up. When he holds her close, she feels almost-whole. Almost like what she's supposed to be. Even when she gets too-intense, too-wild, burns too hot, he runs his fingers through her hair, stroking and soothing, and she settles back into herself.

But it doesn't last. She throws up breakfast for a week straight, then sneaks into a pharmacy to buy a pregnancy test to tell her what she already knows. The little plus sign makes her heart sink lower regardless, and she tells her mother she's spending the night with a school friend when she goes to have the termination. John holds her hand, and he's the only reason she doesn't burst into tears.

The blood that washes onto the floor of the shower doesn't even look like hers.

***

Over the years, she embraces the cold. 

She rises through the CIA's ranks, uses her fluency for language and talent for survival to become the best agent she can be. Uses the hollowness inside her to become someone new for each mission, someone not-Emily, not-Aamilah, who can be what she cannot. She does not need to learn anything beyond the mechanics to learn to kill, and if they call her "ice-bitch" or "freezer burn", then it only shows how good she has gotten at hiding what she is.

Of course, it cannot last. Ian Doyle is the first man ( _human_ , Aamilah says inside her, _mortal_ ) who sees what she really is. She loves him for that. 

Aamilah comes back in bits and pieces - a glint in Lauren's eyes, a sharp-edged smile, a certain abandon during sex - and it's the best she (Lauren-Emily-Aamilah) has felt in decades. She knows she shouldn't let herself sink into the role this deeply, should stay cold and aloof when she isn't with Ian, because the entire relationship is supposed to be a facade.

He burns too hot to ignore. She falls for Ian regardless of what her training tells her, and she nearly dies for it.

(She can be killed. This body, this human identity, is mortal. It ages and will eventually die, because you can't just run around looking the same for all eternity. Emily will die, but Aamilah will come back as a new human woman, with another name.

It just happens sooner than she thinks.)

***

The first day she meets David Rossi, he buys her coffee.

He's just returning to the BAU, puffed up with pride and too many years on book tours, and he doesn't have a clue who she is. Oh, he knows there's a woman named Emily Prentiss on his team, but when she stops that morning in Starbucks, all he sees is an attractive woman. He isn't even flirting, really; the barista had made his double-espresso with milk (heaven forbid, she'll learn he's an inveterate snob about certain things - Italian leather shoes, food in general, and espresso) and he passes it to her.

"Miss? You don't happen to like espresso, do you?"

He picks up his milk-less espresso without looking at her, and sweeps out of the Starbucks. The coffee he's given her is good - not a patch on real Turkish coffee, of course, but acceptable - and just sweet enough. The warmth of it slides down her throat as she swallows, and she swears she can feel her eyes glow.

It's her first offering in a very long time, and it endears the grouchy bastard to her. Even when he's flouting rules and running around procedure and giving Hotch grey hair, she tries to talk the rest of the team into giving him a chance. She follows him to Indianapolis for reasons she doesn't fully understand until she (and Morgan and JJ) are standing behind him at a hotel bar, when she looks him in the eye, and tells him he's buying before settling in to hear how he found the Galens dead and their children alive.

She's followed him because he's a Storyteller, and she has a Story to tell. She doesn't quite leave him hints - that would be too easy - but there are certain, unconscious things she does.

Wearing a copper necklace.

Keeping tahweez for the entire team in her suitcase on every case.

Saying a surat for her father and Allah before every flight.

And it's easy, it's surviving. She isn't Lauren-cold any longer. Until Matthew Benton is killed and she finds herself out in the freezing sleet, sharing a coffee with Dave Rossi and telling him the story of what happened in Rome.

Confession used to drain her. She can remember chapels and basilicas, ritual after ritual that her mother dragged her on. They had to be Orthodox Christian in the Ukraine, Islamic in Saudi Arabia, now Catholic in Italy, and Emily was old enough to have a distaste for the pretense. Still, she bent her knee and clasped her hands and told the priest she committed this sin or that sin, and was supposedly forgiven.

This, she thinks, is true confession. Standing in a vacant lot, shivering into her coat, the taste of scalding hot coffee still on her tongue, and David Rossi. Who does not judge her, does not offer condemnation or platitudes or anything but his support - she did the best thing she could have done, and though his beliefs say otherwise, he forgives her.

But then, she supposes, that is the gift of a Storyteller: the gift of listening in return.

He even knows what to do when she starts to cry. He offers her a tissue, slips his gloved hand into hers, and lets her turn into his shoulder and sob. 

***

It's when she stands in front of a church in DC, shaking from the desire to go inside and knowing she cannot, that she realizes she wants to tell someone. It's never been an issue before. Matthew was Before, Ian only figured out bits and pieces, and she has too much self-preservation to simply announce what she is. What would she say? 

_(I'm a djinn, a jiniri, one of the People of the Flame, made by Allah out of the fire that began the world. I don't live in a bottle, I can't wrinkle my nose, and if you ask me to impersonate Robin Williams, I'll shoot you.)_

Then there is Dave, who followed a block behind her even though she'd told him to go. Dave, who fought the Vatican for her and won, who convinced Hotch they had to trust her. Dave, who's shivering into his Italian loafers but walked the same fourteen blocks she had, to make sure she was going to be all right.

As she stands in front of St. Joshua's, human body bleeding from a nosebleed and feeling as hollow as she felt in that hospital in Rome, she smells familiar cologne. Dave hands her a handkerchief, takes her hand, and sits her down on a bench.

And tells her a story.

"Once upon a time - because that's how these things start - there was a girl who was taking a very long journey with her wicked stepmother."

"My mother isn't wicked, she's a politician. Slight difference."

He laughs, lacing his fingers with hers and inching closer. "And you're interrupting. Now, what the little girl didn't know was that her stepmother hated her, because the little girl would grow up to be more powerful than she. The stepmother was jealous and frightened, and that is a very dangerous combination. So one day, she abandoned the little girl in the woods, where she met a rabbit and a dog."

"Wait, there's no rabbits or dogs in Snow White-"

"And I am telling the story here, so hush. A rabbit and a dog. They became friends with the little girl, and soon they were having many adventures, exploring the woods. But during their adventures, the little girl wandered off into a steep valley, fell, and got hurt. She called out for her friends, for her stepmother, anyone to help her, but no one heard."

She should be feeling the coldness inching through her, but Emily doesn't. Dave's voice chases away the cold, promises warm evenings by a fire and hundreds of stories. 

"Just as she was about to give up, a knight on his horse heard the little girl crying, and came to her aid. He brought her back to the castle, where the king ordered his healers to make her well. What they didn't know was that the little girl wasn't flesh and blood; she was magic. She fell into a deep, healing sleep that the king and his knights believed had killed her. They even buried her, thinking she was truly dead."

"So what happens? True love's kiss brings her back?" Emily says derisively. "The right guy gives her CPR and suddenly everything's okay?"

Dave shakes his head. "You can't even suspend your disbelief for a fairytale, can you?"

And Emily cannot answer, because she knows if she did, she'd tell the truth. No, there are no happy endings. No princesses rescued from towers or giants or poisoned apples. No good faeries to reverse evil curses. There is only what is real and what is true, and Emily (Aamilah) knows Allah smiles upon those who speak truth.

"Fairytales are for children, and none of them are true," she says. 

"Fairytales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be killed.”

"Chesterton."

"Don't you want to know how the story ends?" Dave asks. "I know I do."

His eyes tell her everything: _he knows_.

***

They weather what comes, together. George Foyet and the Prince of Darkness and the return of Ian Doyle. It isn't even a relationship, not yet - just a steady presence by her shoulder and a wordless nod:

_I'm here._

She wishes she could make the same promise, but Ian calls her. He uses the knowledge he's sold his soul for, and he traps her in that warehouse in Boston. She cannot move from the circle, and not even baiting Ian with Declan will placate him. He tries to brand her, but she is a creature of fire, so he settles for sticking a piece of wood through her soft, human stomach.

Derek tries to save her, but it's better this way. Better to let them think that Emily Prentiss died in that hospital. And it would have worked, but not for stubborn, loyal-to-a-fault Dave, who makes a perfectly-timed mention of Witness Protection to JJ and the State Department.

So she runs to Paris, changes her name and tries to keep away the cold. The only thing that makes it bearable is Dave. She wakes up to a package of her favorite books, a delivery of flowers to her apartment, a CD of Arabic jazz, tickets to Sleeping Beauty at the Paris Opera House. 

Offerings, knowing offerings, are more intoxicating to her than anything she's ever known. She and the rest of the djinn were forbidden to be worshiped, but offerings hold power. Every gift, every token, binds her loyalty to Dave the way he's already bound himself to her. 

And then one night, as she's leaving the internet cafe she uses to Skype with JJ, she hears it:

_He created man from sounding clay like the clay of pottery, and the jinn He created from a smokeless flame of fire. He is the Lord of the two easts and the Lord of the two wests. Then which of the Blessings of your Lord will you both deny? He has let loose the two seas (the salt and the fresh water) meeting together, and between them is a barrier which none of them can transgress. Then which of the Blessings of your Lord will you both deny?_

The _Ar-Rahman_. The surat of Allah the Most Gracious and Merciful, and Dave is using it to summon her. He does not call her with selfish pleas or clumsy words, but calls to her in her own language. After all, she is the one who told him of _Al-Kafirun_ , the surat of the Disbelievers - _"you have your faith and I have mine"_ \- and reminded him of how close the beliefs of Islam and Christianity really are.

She cannot deny this prayer.

***

"It worked," Dave says, stunned, when she appears at his door. "I can't - I didn't think it would. It's a fairytale."

She embraces him, feels the strength coursing through his veins and the warmth of his skin, and feels the fire that she keeps banked begin to stir. After this nightmare of a life she's been living, she's finally somewhere she belongs, with a man she might be starting to love.

"Once upon a time," she says, "there was a little girl made of fire and her wicked stepmother made of earth. The stepmother was jealous of the girl, who had inherited her father's powers, and took her on a long journey away from her father. They traveled to many distant lands, and though the stepmother tried, the little girl grew ever more powerful. You know of her adventures with the rabbit and the dog, her sickness in the land of cold and bells, and how she met the king and his knights and was made well again."

"And she stayed always with the knight who had found her that day in the valley?" Dave asks. 

His hands stroke across her face, tracing the bow of her lips, the sweep of her cheekbones, the arch of her eyebrows. He reads her face in a sort of Braille, as if he must commit her to memory before he loses her again, and she promises herself she will never again leave him. 

She knows now what had driven her mother to run away rather than face: the djinn do not love mortals easily. But when they do, it is no steady, abiding everyday love. It is bone-deep and only occurs once. Emily's father loved her; not Elizabeth.

"She did," Emily says, kissing Dave's temple. She could almost feel the knowledge that runs in his veins the way fire runs through hers. "They slayed dragons and had adventures, and she loved him more than she had ever loved anything else."

As he presses his lips to hers, Aamilah can feel herself begin to glow.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Aamilah is Arabic for "righteous; doer of good deeds".  
> 2) _Jiniri_ is Arabic for "female djinn".  
>  3) _Surat_ are verses found in the Qur'an. The one that Dave quotes is Surat 55 or Surat Ar-Rahman; Emily references Surat 109, or Surat Al-Kafirun.  
>  4) Emily's necklace is a nod to the common trope that djinn live in copper lamps.  
> 5) _Tahweez_ are amulets or talismans inscribed with surat that offer protection against djinn or other evil spirits.  
>  6) St. Joshua is the patron saint of spies.  
> 7) Dave quotes G.K. Chesterton, as the show has done as well.  
> 8) The _djinn_ are described in both the Qur'an and in Scherezade's "One Thousand and One Nights" with all of the qualities described here: made of fire, capable of flight/speedy travel, ability to grant your heart's desire, human appearance. They can be summoned and trapped inside a circle of prayers, and can be killed in human form.


End file.
